Springfield M1911A1 in 9mm

Jeff22

New member
So I just bought a new gun. A slightly used Springfield M1911A1 in 9mm. 4 digit serial number with no prefix. Probably about a dozen years old. For $600.

The previous owner had installed big adjustable sights which I am having removed and replaced with high visibility fixed sights. Other than that I intend to leave it pretty much alone.

I've accumulated quite a many guns over the years, and the only things really remaining on my list (at a very low priority) were a Springfield Armory
M1911 platform pistol in both .45 ACP and 9mm. I planned to leave any such guns pretty stock other than getting decent sights installed and maybe a trigger job if needed.

I shoot a little bit in both USPSA and IDPA, usually in Production and SSP classes (my issue gun at the PD was a Sig for years and now we recently converted to Glock 22s). If circumstances permit, I try to shoot other guns in classifier matches and sometimes in regular monthly club matches, depending.

(My other M1911 pattern pistols are a Colt Combat Commander that I bought in 1978 (was my duty gun as a cop for 6-1/2 years at the beginning of my career ) and a Remington Rand GI surplus gun that I bought in 1990.

The Remington Rand was a re-import from South Korea or the Phillippines. The barrel was shot out, the slide and frame were pitted, the grip screws were rusted tight into the bushings, the wooden grips were rotted and somebody had tried to adjust the tiny GI sights with a hammer.

My intent was to rebuild the gun into a rack grade M1911A1 just like I had in the MPs. My local gunsmith bead blasted and parkerized the frame, replaced internal parts as necessary, installed a new stainless steel barrel (that he had lying around the shop), replaced the tiny GI sights with new tiny GI sights that weren't all beat up, and did a trigger job to 5-1/2 lbs. It turned out really nice. I shot it in an IDPA classifier match a few years ago, but the tiny sights and my old eyes were a bad combination. I shot good but had to slow down a quite a bit because the damn sights were so small)
 
I shot one a couple of years ago and really had to search to find one. Ended up waiting from January to October to get one and then lucked out and got two of them. My son has that one.

The two we have are current production in stainless steel and they are pretty nice. Don't like the factory mags at all and replaced them with Wilsons.

My son has about 100 rounds through his and I have almost 200 through mine.

Trigger is a little heavier than either the PM9 or the Smith Pro Series but still very crisp.

The slide is a little tight on the rails and I am working on that by cycling the action with a little lubriplate and cleaning it off when it turns black and looking for bright spots on the rails and repeat as needed.

The gun is coming right along. I was fortunate enough to shoot one about two and a half years ago out at the range that a fellow had bought from a dealer who had the gun worked on a little. I was really impressed with the feel. I just did not think it would take almost a year after paying for the gun to actually get one in hand.

Able's Guns has had them on their web site for a month now and have not sold out. The price has gone up from $800 to $999.99 in a year.

I need to get another in .45.
 
I love the 1911 9mm Springfields, they make a great gun even more fun and cheaper to shoot. My first centerfire hand gun I ever shot was my dads Colt Commander 1911 9mm so naturally once I started collecting guns I needed one to fill that spot in my meger collection so I found a nice used early Springer that someone had some custom work done to it with Millet sights and had it chrome/brushed plated look put on it. It is a keeper.
 
Springfield M1911A1 continued . . .

Last Tuesday (14 Jan) I took the 9mm Springfield M1911A1 to the range for a practice session. I shot 3 60 rnd practice courses using Wolf & (mostly) GECO ammo.

The slide doesn't always lock open when the mag is empty with the original Springfield magazines that came with the gun.

The Wilson 10 rnd mags work great with 6 or 8 rnds loaded and are iffy when loaded to capacity. Probably because the springs are still pretty stiff.

(One of my shooting buddies recommended the Dawson magazines as well as the Wilsons.)

As I view this gun as a minor caliber trainer for my other .45s of that type, I'm happy if the mags work when loaded with 7 or 8 rnds.

Tuesday night I shot the gun in a local club match on the indoor range. The match was run to USPSA rules but is unsanctioned.

I did have one malfunction (failure to eject) but otherwise the gun ran okay. The stages had a bunch of one hand only shooting on targets partially obscured by no-shoots and hard cover. Even though I had practiced strong hand only & weak hand only earlier in the day I did pull a couple of shots into hard cover. I was bashing the trigger a little bit when trying to go too fast.

Saturday my club had our monthly USPSA match.

I shot my G22 duty gun for the match and did a re-shoot on the classifier (24 rnds) with the Springfield M1911A1 using the GECO ammo. One malfunction on a reload. Not quite sure what happened. Hurt my elapsed time a little bit.

At some future time I may order 3 Dawson mags and give them a try too.

One of the guys in my club recommended that I consider a heavy duty extractor from Evolution Gun Works if I keep having extractor problems, and to replace the recoil spring since I have no idea how old it is.

I do find that when shooting a M1911 platform pistol riding my thumb on the safety, if the grip safety doesn't have a "speed bump" on it I sometimes have to re-position my shooting hand to get the grip safety fully depressed.

The gun needs a trigger job (to about 5lbs) and I'll have to keep an eye on potential failures to eject or extract. The gun is very pleasant to shoot, though I'm a little rusty with the manual of arms on a single action auto so I have to be very mindful when trying to go fast.
 
I don't mean to jump on you TOO hard, but ... you do not have an M1911A1. The M1911A1 was the U.S. military issue sidearm from shortly after WW1 through the Vietnam conflict. It was issued in .45 Automatic only. Postwar commercial pistols of the 1911 design are generically "1911s" but are not "M1911A1s."
 
AB is right. Springfield calls them 1911-A1s. No "M" on the front of their name. ;)

If only they made one blue with fixed sights... shorter than the 5". Maybe an alloy frame. If frogs had wings...
 
Springfield 9mm

So I spent the summer shooting my G22 in USPSA matches & my G19 in IDPA matches. Now that my club has moved matches indoors for the winter I decided to shoot the Springfield 1911 pattern gun in 9mm for a few months.

I still had a few problems with failures to extract so I purchased a heavy duty extractor from Evolution Gun Works. The extraction problems ceased.

The Wilson 9 round magazines work great once they get broken in.

After further consideration I've decided that gun does NOT need any trigger work. The trigger is fairly light & crisp as it is with a short reset. I have discovered that if I try to go fast shooting one-hand only I sometimes bash the trigger a little bit & hook the shot to 3 or 9 o'clock.
 
I bought a 9mm "Loaded Target", three or four years ago. It was a really nice gun. But, a friend liked it $100 more than I did, so I sold it without even shooting it.
My plan had been to convert it to 9x23, but it probably would have been shot only rarely, so better that it go to someone who'd shoot it.
I just got a new RO, in .45, and am again impressed with the overall fit and finish of the very reasonably-priced gun.
Springfields offer a lot of value, and they're apparently now "American made", with no import stamps, if that's important.
 
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